People don’t want to wait for the content they want to appear on the page. If the first block of information does not appear for more than 10 seconds, this will be a reason for the client to leave your offer. The optimal page loading time is 2.5 seconds.
If we consider the loading speed of an online platform in more detail, then this is the time it takes to display a virtual page in your browser. It is the period of time between the time you clicked and the moment you saw the content.
Importance of the fast page loading speed
It is necessary to understand why page loading speed is important. The answer is simple — it influences user behavior, their attitude towards your brand, and their opinion of your offer. Also, page loading speed indirectly affects the profitability of your business. If you remember your experience on a web resource that loaded slowly, your impression was negative. But if the online portal loaded quickly, then you were pleased to surf the offers of this company.
Factors related to page loading speed:
- Page indexing. Not only are SEO settings important, loading speed also impacts the connection between the consumer and the brand. The site must provide content faster so that search robots process more pages in a specific time.
- Conversion. Communication between the user and your company should be comfortable, so he should feel good on your site. If the site loads faster, the user will quickly select a product, add it to the cart, and complete the purchase. A pleasant and comfortable purchase will probably bring him to your brand again.
Also, you should remember about Google search ranking. Site speed is now one of the important metrics that Google takes into account when ranking web portals. If the user did not wait for the page to load and closed it, your virtual platform will be ranked lower in the search engine.
How to increase site speed?
You need to get rid of the points that slow down the loading of your web resource. Certain steps will help you fix the problem:
- Improve your hosting. Your site may have outgrown the tariff megabytes, and low loading speed indicates a lack of resources provided by the hosting.
- Use caching. Select caching plugins (For example, Cache Enabler or WP Rocket) or browser-side caching.
- Remove unnecessary plugins. They are useful for generating or editing code, but plugins also overload the web platform. If you don’t use any plugins, just delete them.
- Reduce the weight of images. Use services to have high-quality but lightweight images. Kraken, Iloveimg, or others will help you compress images. In addition to the usual JPEG or PNG formats, a new type, WebP, has appeared (the quality will be the same, but the size will be 26% smaller).
- Page compression. Increase site loading speed with server-side page compression. Optimize CSS and JavaScript for efficient compression. Some comments and codes inside CSS and JavaScript are unnecessary but slow down the website’s loading.
- Set up preload. You must prioritize and choose the text or image that will load faster and appear first. This object will be visible to the user first, and others would be loaded next and will not slow down the site.
- Reduce requests or redirects. The more minimalistic your platform is, the better it will load. By reducing the number of requests the browser needs to send, the site will load faster.
- Apply CDN. The point here is that the user receives data not from one server on the planet but from the closest one in his territorial location. It is convenient for corporations whose client base is located worldwide. If you have a regional site, then you do not need this.
Regularly monitor a site’s health, for example, using PageSpeed. Test its speed and follow the above methods to ensure optimal speed. Your users should feel comfortable using your web resource, and your task is to do everything possible to achieve this.
